Devil's Mark

by Megan Crane

  And still, she felt the way Uptown gripped her, sure and steady, like he could hold her there forever if he wanted, trapped between his big, hard hand and the wall of his chest. It hummed inside her like a separate pulse. It throbbed, deep and low and needy, between her legs. It made her feel wild. Different. Changed.

  “You need to tell Digger to come talk to me himself,” her father was saying, all bluster again. Loud and hearty, as if he’d decided he was taking back control of this situation. As if he’d ever had it in the first place—but Holly could see the panic in his eyes. And she found there was no particular joy in that. She didn’t find her father’s downfall all that satisfying. Fascinating, yes. But not satisfying.

  In all those fiery speeches she’d practiced, she’d focused on her own feelings. She’d concentrated on how betrayed she felt and how disillusioned she was by all of this. But she hadn’t stopped to consider whether or not the accusations were true. She’d accepted that he was guilty on the spot. As did everyone else, it seemed. Clearly she’d always known, on some level, that her father wasn’t what he seemed. And it was only now really hitting her that despite all of that, she still loved him the way she always had—or she wanted to love him, anyway. Whatever that meant in her family. And more than that, she didn’t want whatever this thing was between him and Uptown to explode the way she could feel it was about to do. She wanted Uptown to blow up her life, maybe, but not her whole world.

  “I don’t need to tell Digger shit.” Uptown shifted, moving Holly to one side of his big body, and she couldn’t keep herself from looking up at him as he did it. He glanced at her, but she couldn’t read him. His jaw was hard, his mouth set in a belligerent line. His gaze was a dark thing as it met hers, intense and searching, but he moved it back to her father before she could do much more than catch her breath. “You owe the club a lot of money, Benny. Money we didn’t lend you. Money you stole because that’s the kind of shit-for-brains dumbass you are. You don’t have a lot of options. Some of the brothers are surprised. They figured that after all the shit the club did for you over the years, you’d get that this kind of crap is unacceptable. But not me. I know exactly what kind of scumbag you are, don’t I?”

  “This has nothing to do with you, boy,” her father hurled at him, something more than simple panic in his gaze.

  Holly winced at the word “boy.” But Uptown only laughed.

  It was not a nice laugh.

  “Here’s a little incentive for you, Mr. Mayor,” he said, a sharp sort of emphasis on “Mr. Mayor” that made Holly feel jittery. She didn’t understand how her father responded to it with nothing but a low growl. “You take as much time as you need to think it over. What you owe, how you’re gonna pay it, what you think the penalty should be for someone who outright stole from the club for years and thought he could get away with it. To say nothing of all that shit you pulled with Ward Thayer that I have to tell you, feels a lot like a good, old-fashioned, double-crossing, backstabbing betrayal. You douchebags were supposed to keep the club out of trouble and our members out of jail, not do everything you could to make sure our brothers got longer sentences than they should have. Sugar should have been out years ago.”

  “Sugar Bellamy killed that man,” her father argued, but Holly thought he looked a little sick to his stomach. “You’re bringing your personal feelings into club business.”

  “Am I?” Uptown smirked. “I’ll pray real hard about that, Benny. And in the meantime, me and your girl?”

  He released Holly as he said it, but he did it slow. He let his hand slide off her body in a way that spoke of great intimacy and satiation. Or maybe it was the look he gave her then, hungry and dark. He might as well have outright announced that they’d had sex. A lot of sex. The kind of sweaty, dirty biker sex she was afraid to let herself imagine too closely, because she couldn’t tell if it scared her or intrigued her. She might have been impressed by his ability to transmit so much with so little if she hadn’t been so horrified that he’d done it here. Right here. Right in her father’s face.

  And he was still talking. “We’re gonna keep getting friendly. I can’t imagine what your golf buddies are gonna think when they find out your sweet little prom queen virgin, everyone’s wet dream, is getting herself so down and dirty with a scumbag like me. Might take the shine off her altogether. There’s a chance you might win in court. But you can’t magically clean up your girl after I ruin her, can you?”

  Holly felt split in two then. Again. And more painfully this time. There was the part of her that had felt so free and beautiful on the back of his bike, or when she’d kissed him like she could do it forever. That part felt crushed.

  And then there was the other part of her, practical and realistic whether she wanted to be or not, that thought, Of course.

  Of course a man like Uptown would never look twice at a girl like her without an ulterior motive. She had no chest to display in too-tight Harley-Davidson tank tops. No wild blond hair that bikers could tug on the way she’d seen them do in Dumb Gator’s while they were playing their rough games on the pool tables and up against the walls. No ability to flirt, much less instantly get friendly the way bombshells like Katelyn did on a dime. And that was his kind of woman. That was what he wanted. She’d known that since she was sixteen and she’d seen the woman—all of that woman, literally, from the requisite big hair to a tiny bandage masquerading as a skirt that he’d shoved up around her waist—he’d held splayed wide open as he’d pounded into her on the raised stone tomb behind the church.

  Of course none of this had been about her or all those magically intense feelings inside of her when she was near him.

  Of course this was a revenge thing for him that had nothing to do with her. She was a tool he was using to bludgeon her father, nothing more. It made sense.

  It all made sense, and she had no one to blame but herself for that aching, raw thing that seared her from the inside out.

  “We’re not…” Holly whispered, or tried to, but no one was paying attention to her.

  Her father was turning purple. His face seemed to shine hot, rage and something much uglier stamped all over him. And Uptown was only grinning back at that display, his eyes dark and oddly expectant at once.

  “Yeah,” Uptown said with obvious satisfaction when all her father could do was sputter. “That’s what I thought. You’re a piece of shit, Benny. Always have been, always will be.”

  “Get off my land,” her father gritted out, his voice strangled. “Before I use this shotgun.”

  Uptown only laughed at that, which somehow made the whole thing worse. It made her father seem that much weaker. He was still laughing as he turned, running a hand over his dirty blond hair and then plucking Holly’s helmet from her nerveless fingers. His gaze raked over her, lingering on her pale face and then the pulse hammering at her neck. His mouth was unsmiling as he raised his dark eyes back up to hers and held her gaze for a beat or two. He looked harsh and forbidding, but no less beautiful. Never the slightest bit less beautiful. That was the part that got to her the most.

  Of course, she thought again, furious with herself. Just look at him. He’s wild and gorgeous and free, and not for you. Never for you. How could you have imagined otherwise?

  “I’ll pick you up for your shift,” Uptown told her, and it wasn’t a request. It was a direct order, like she was nothing more than a good little foot soldier and he already knew he could count on her obedience. And she’d been the one thinking about loyalty, so maybe he could. It was like he knew her better than she knew herself—but how was that possible? “Be ready at eight.”

  Then he swung onto his bike, started it up like there was no one watching him with malicious intent and a shotgun in one hand, and then he took his sweet time roaring off down the long drive.

  Leaving Holly to deal with her father. And the great big mess Uptown had left behind.

  She made herself turn back around so she was facing her father full on. She forced herself to
lift her head and meet his gaze. She might be quivering deep inside, but she didn’t have to show it.

  “Daddy,” she began, working hard to keep her voice even, “I—”

  “You fucking whore.” He didn’t sound like himself. He didn’t sound like a man—he sounded like some kind of enraged creature, so beside himself his words barely made it out of his mouth, past all that fury.

  Holly thought that if he’d charged down the steps and slapped her across her face, she couldn’t have been more shocked. Or more surprised.

  She felt split down the middle all over again. Split and then split again, and she was starting to wonder what was left of her. If she would end up nothing more than ash and slivers.

  But this time that feeling of being wrenched in two was almost a good thing, because she could ignore that traumatized little girl inside of her, who wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and sob over the loss of the man she’d tried so hard to believe in all her life. The loss of that fantasy version of Mayor Benny Chambless, her daddy, she’d been invested in for so long. She could concentrate on the other part, the tougher part, who stood tall and met her father’s gaze as if he didn’t scare her or disappoint her or make her wonder exactly what she’d gotten out of the blinders she’d been wearing all this time.

  But she knew. Family. She’d gotten to pretend they were the kind of family she saw on television—maybe a little rough around the edges, but essentially good and filled with love. The more she wore her blinders, the more she could pretend that was what she had right here.

  Not that it mattered, because her blinders were gone now.

  “That is an ugly thing to say to anyone.” Her voice was hushed but steady. Maybe even a little bit fierce. “Especially your own daughter.”

  Her father’s eyes narrowed, making his cheeks look rounder and redder.

  “What would you call it, Holly? Rolling up on the back of a motorcycle like one of those tramps who flaunt themselves all over this town? Like you’re no better than any one of the sluts that swamp rat piece of trash has had crawling all over him his whole life?”

  “I can assure you,” she said stiffly, opting not to entertain any images of sluts all over Uptown, “that I am neither a tramp nor a whore, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why you would think otherwise no matter how angry you are. He gave me a ride home, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t all, of course, but she didn’t see how a kiss—or a lot of kisses—counted. It still didn’t make her a tramp or a whore. In fact, she felt pretty strongly that whatever she might or might not have done with Uptown, it wouldn’t render her a tramp, a whore, a slut, or any other damn thing her father chose to call her. From where she stood, it didn’t sound as if Mayor Benny Chambless ought to be calling any pots or kettles black.

  But her father wasn’t listening to her, in any case. He started to pace the wide front step, running one hand over his mostly bald head while he still kept a hard grip on that shotgun with the other.

  “I should have known they’d pull something like this,” he muttered. He swung another condemning look her way, this one more vicious than before. “I thought you were smarter than this. I thought I raised you better. How could you walk right into a trap like that? He’s not wrong, you know. If it gets out that he’s had his hands all over you, you might as well be garbage for all the good you’ll do me.”

  It hurt to take a breath, but Holly made herself. It was that or pass out where she stood, and she refused to let that happen. She squared her shoulders as if that could repel all the deeply messed-up things he’d just said. As if that could make them go away.

  Because it was one thing to suspect the truth behind the comfortable lies that had ordered her life. It was another entirely to hear them flat out.

  “You raised me to be honest and to try to be a good person,” she heard herself say, as if from a long way off. As if she was brave instead of sick and scared. And as if she had nothing at all in common with the potential garbage slut he seemed to think he was addressing. “Not to steal from anyone.”

  Her father stopped pacing, his scowl taking over his whole face and making her stomach flip in dread and something else. Something far stickier and more complicated than fear.

  Shame, a small voice inside of her intoned, hushed and certain. You’re ashamed of him. Of all of this. The mess. The arrest. The terrible things that keep coming out of his mouth.

  Holly had no earthly idea what to do with it. With an idea that would have seemed so far beyond impossible a month ago that she would have laughed out loud if anyone had suggested it. Ashamed of her father? Shamed by association with him, thanks to the blood in her veins? Impossible.

  And yet here they were.

  “You better watch your mouth,” he warned her, and that made it worse. He sounded…mean. Nothing more, nothing less. No shades of gray, no mitigating circumstances, no possibility she’d misconstrued his words. Just purely mean, all the way through.

  “Did you do it?” she countered, because maybe she had a death wish. Or maybe, for once, she wanted to know the truth. Not all the lies and misdirection, for a change. Because she couldn’t think of anything else that could shift the weight of all that shame from her, heavy and thick, as cloying as the spring flowers on the breeze. “Did you take money from criminals and then steal from them, too?”

  Holly couldn’t process the look she saw on her father’s face then. She wished she hadn’t witnessed it, because it made her stomach lurch dangerously and she thought for a panicked moment that she might actually get sick.

  Contempt. Fury. Outrage. Disgust. All wrapped into one terrible expression, like beneath all that, he wanted to hurt her.

  Her. His daughter. His only child.

  He looked like a stranger. A deeply nasty one.

  “You’re no use to me soiled and used by biker scum, Holly,” he told her with a calm that would likely be chilling in retrospect. After the initial horror of what he was saying to her passed. After she survived the horrible way he was looking at her, as if she was a dirty, broken thing he wanted to throw away because she was polluting his sweet, manicured lawn. As if it was only the fact he might soil himself in the process that was keeping him from throwing her out into the road here and now. “Your purpose is to keep your mouth shut, look pretty, and do what I tell you, since your worthless mother couldn’t manage to do it herself. And now, after all the work and care I put into you, you’re no better than that dumb bitch. Which means you’re no goddamned use to me at all.”

  And then he sneered at her as if she was even less than that. As if she disgusted him down deep into his bones. Then her father, the man she’d held above all others since she was small and tried so hard to believe in ever after, turned and walked away from her, leaving her childhood in shattered little pieces all around her.

  Slivers and ash, just as she’d predicted, smashed down flat into dust.

  He didn’t look back.

  Chapter 7

  When pretty little Holly Chambless walked into Dumb Gator’s this time, Uptown was forced to face the unpleasant fact that her appearance made him…relieved.

  Relieved, for God’s sake.

  Like he was some weak-ass little bitch of a man who spent his time fretting over the inscrutable behavior of females. A description he was more than a little bit appalled to recognize fit him after today.

  She hadn’t been at her big-ass house when he’d gone to pick her up, and he hadn’t much liked the rush of conflicting feelings he’d had about that. He hadn’t liked the fact there’d been any fucking feelings at all. He’d pounded on Benny’s fuck you red front door, but no one had answered it, not even one of the servants he knew perfectly well Benny liked to keep around. The whole place had been still. Silent.

  Uptown had not been pleased, and then when he’d gotten to Dumb Gator’s, her perky little convertible had been gone from its spot out front where she usually parked it, so sweet and shiny and begging to get sprayed with
paint-chipping gravel.

  And yeah, he hadn’t loved that, either. But he’d had to suck it up and pretend he didn’t notice. That he wasn’t sitting around trying to figure out if she was just avoiding him after this morning, if Benny had locked her up in the basement, or if she’d hightailed it out of Lagrange to get away from all this shit, which he figured he couldn’t really blame her for, either.

  Though the edgy thing that ate at his insides like some kind of acid suggested that probably, he would.

  By the time Holly sauntered into the bar awhile later, looking as fresh and sweet and out of place as ever, Uptown was past edgy and well on into something a whole lot darker.

  “Something up your ass tonight, brother?” Chaser was sprawled in the booth across from Uptown, working his way through a critical whiskey situation that had required he liberate the entire bottle from behind the bar to expedite the process. “You’re twitchy as fuck.”

  Uptown cut a glare his way, then returned it to Holly as she pranced through the crowd like some low-country Disney princess. His little swamp prom queen, too good for this place and too sweet for him, and yet there he was with a raging hard-on and the taste of her heavy in his mouth. Like she wasn’t a pawn at all. Like he just wanted her, straight up, and Benny was the distraction.

  To say that didn’t sit right with him was understating the situation.

  “Too much shit going down I don’t like,” he muttered. Because there was no way in hell he was sharing his fucking feelings with one of the club’s deadliest enforcers like he was a weepy little bitch and Chaser might throw him a tissue. Chaser had a teenage daughter at home, already making a name for herself with all the trouble she kicked up and the problems she liked to cause. The last thing he needed was one of his brothers acting like another one of his daughter Kaylee’s sullen friends, for fuck’s sake. “Too much crap.”